Over the past 20 years the rate of determination of membrane protein structures has gradually increased, but most success has been in crystallising membrane proteins from bacteria rather than from eukaryotes [1]. Bacterial membrane proteins have been easier to overexpress using standard techniques in Escherichia coli than eukaryotic membrane proteins [2,3] and the bacterial proteins are sometimes far more stable in detergent, detergent-stability being an essential prerequisite to purification and crystallisation. Genome sequencing projects have also allowed the cloning and expression of many homologues of a specific transporter or ion channel, which also greatly improves the chances of success during crystallisation. However, out of the 120 different membrane protein structures that have been solved to date, there are only seven structures of mammalian integral membrane proteins (http://blanco.biomol.uci.edu/); five of these membrane proteins were purified from natural sources and are stable in detergent solutions. Apart from the difficulties in overexpressing eukaryotic membrane proteins, they often have poor stability in detergent solutions, which severely restricts the range of crystallisation conditions that can be explored without their immediate denaturation or precipitation. Ideally, membrane proteins should be stable for many days in any given detergent solution, but the detergents that are best suited to growing diffraction-quality crystals tend to be the most destabilising detergents ie those with short aliphatic chains and small or charged head groups. It is also the structures of human membrane proteins that we would like to solve, because these are required to help the development of therapeutic agents by the pharmaceutical industry; often there are substantial differences in the pharmacology of receptors, channels and transporters from different mammals, whilst yeast and bacterial genomes may not include any homologous proteins. There is thus an overwhelming need to develop a generic strategy that will allow the production of detergent-stable eukaryotic integral membrane proteins for crystallisation and structure determination and potentially for other purposes such as drug screening, bioassay and biosensor applications.
Membrane proteins have evolved to be sufficiently stable in the membrane to ensure cell viability, but they have not evolved to be stable in detergent solution, suggesting that membrane proteins could be artificially evolved and detergent-stable mutants isolated [4]. This was subsequently demonstrated for two bacterial proteins, diacylglycerol kinase (DGK) [5,6] and bacteriorhodopsin [7]. Random mutagenesis of DGK identified specific point mutations that increased thermostability and, when combined, the effect was additive so that the optimally stable mutant had a half-life of 35 minutes at 80° C. compared with a half-life of 6 minutes at 55° C. for the native protein [6]. It was shown that the trimer of the detergent-resistant DGK mutant had become stable in SDS and it is thus likely that stabilisation of the oligomeric state played a significant role in thermostabilisation. Although the aim of the mutagenesis was to produce a membrane protein suitable for crystallisation, the structure of DGK has yet to be determined and there have been no reports of successful crystallization. A further study on bacteriorhodopsin by cysteine-scanning mutagenesis along helix B demonstrated that it was not possible to predict which amino acid residues would lead to thermostability upon mutation nor, when studied in the context of the structure, was it clear why thermostabilisation had occurred [7].
GPCRs constitute a very large family of proteins that control many physiological processes and are the targets of many effective drugs. Thus, they are of considerable pharmacological importance. A list of GPCRs is given in Foord et al (2005) Pharmacol Rev. 57, 279-288, which is incorporated herein by reference. GPCRs are generally unstable when isolated, and despite considerable efforts, it has not been possible to crystallise any except bovine rhodopsin, which naturally is exceptionally stable.
GPCRs are druggable targets, and reference is made particularly to Overington et al (2006) Nature Rev. Drug Discovery 5, 993-996 which indicates that over a quarter of present drugs have a GPCR as a target.
GPCRs are thought to exist in multiple distinct conformations which are associated with different pharmacological classes of ligand such as agonists and antagonists, and to cycle between these conformations in order to function (Kenakin T. (1997) Ann NY Acad Sci 812, 116-125).
It will be appreciated that the methods of the invention do not include a method as described in D'Antona et al., including binding of [3H]CP55940 to a constitutively inactive mutant human cannabinoid receptor 1 (T210A) in which the Thr residue at position 210 is replaced with an Ala residue.